books.google.com - For outside observers, current events in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank are seldom related to the collective memory of ordinary Palestinians. But for Palestinians themselves, the iniquities of the present are experienced as a continuous replay of the injustice of the past.By focusing on memories of...https://books.google.com/books/about/Nakba.html?id=A4U9iw4R1TYC&utm_source=gb-gplus-shareNakba

Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory

For outside observers, current events in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank are seldom related to the collective memory of ordinary Palestinians. But for Palestinians themselves, the iniquities of the present are experienced as a continuous replay of the injustice of the past.

By focusing on memories of the Nakba or "catastrophe" of 1948, in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were dispossessed to create the state of Israel, the contributors to this volume illuminate the contemporary Palestinian experience and clarify the moral claims they make for justice and redress.

The book's essays consider the ways in which Palestinians have remembered and organized themselves around the Nakba, a central trauma that continues to be refracted through Palestinian personal and collective memory. Analyzing oral histories and written narratives, poetry and cinema, personal testimony and courtroom evidence, the authors show how the continuing experience of violence, displacement, and occupation have transformed the pre-Nakba past and the land of Palestine into symbols of what has been and continues to be lost.

Nakba brings to light the different ways in which Palestinians experienced and retain in memory the events of 1948. It is the first book to examine in detail how memories of Palestine's cataclysmic past are shaped by differences of class, gender, generation, and geographical location. In exploring the power of the past, the authors show the urgency of the question of memory for understanding the contested history of the present.

Review: Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory (Cultures of History)

User Review - Kimberlyluisi - Goodreads

The topic is extremely interesting, but what they're trying to say gets bogged down unnecessary academic language. Also, there should be more memories in a book analyzing memories influence on history.Read full review

Review: Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory (Cultures of History)

User Review - Brittan - Goodreads

I cannot say enough about this book. By examining Al Nakba "the catastrophe" through the memories of the people this collection of recollections examines a terrible event and tackles some major ...Read full review

About the author (2007)

Lila Abu Lughod: Professor of Anthropology and Women's Studies at Columbia University. She has published or edited many books including: Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society (California, 2000); Writing Women's World: Bedouin Stories (California, 1993); Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East (Princeton, 1998); and, Dramas of Nationhood: The Politics of Television in Egypt (Chicago, 2004). Although most of her ethnographic research has been on Egypt, she has begun to publish on Palestinian documentary film, ethnography, and memory. Her articles have appeared in journals including the American Anthropologist, American Ethnologist, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Social Text, and Feminist Studies. Ahmad H. Sa'di: Lecturer in the department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University, Israel. His work has focused on democratic politics and issues of citizenship, the impact of local political organizations and personalities on the course of political and social history, on the problems of majority/minority relations, and on labor and economic conditions of Israel's Arab 'minority.' He has published numerous articles in journals including Sociology; Work, Employment and Society; International Journal of Intercultural Relations; Social Identities; Arab Studies Quarterly; Asian Journal of Social Sciences; Social Text; The Japan Center For Area Studies Review; Israel Studies; and British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. His most recent work has been on Al-Nakbah in Palestinian collective memory.